Some people love to track their spending, and others find it a time-consuming and stressful chore. There are more and more apps on the market that can do the hard work of organizing your expenses for you. At a glance, you can see where your money is going and how much you are getting back.

But with so many different apps on the market, it can be difficult to know which one is the best. CNBC Select compared more than a dozen options when evaluating the best budgeting apps and best expense tracking apps, and we’ve found that the most popular have almost 5 out of 5 stars and hundreds of thousands of customer reviews.

We have classified the mint budgeting app as the best free option out there. In addition to offering basic budgeting features, Mint also provides bill payment reminders, personalized alerts when you go over budget, and a credit monitoring service.

Below, we review the Mint budgeting app to give you all the details about its features, including tools, benefits, security, pricing, availability, and ratings so you can decide if it is the right app for managing your money.

mint syncs with your bank accounts, credit cards, and retirement accounts to track your income, purchases, and savings.

The Mint budgeting app comes with a daily budget planner, which suggests budget goals based on your spending. You can adjust your goals (and / or add new ones) as you use the app.

Mint will automatically update and categorize your expenses for you, but you have the flexibility to review and add categories as needed. You can also create your own savings goals and track your investments in the app.

Unlike many other budgeting apps, Mint sets itself apart by going beyond simple budgeting and offering credit monitoring. Users have free 24/7 access to their credit score, a summary of their credit report, as well as notifications of changes to their TransUnion® credit report.

Mint will also send alerts if you are charged an ATM fee, if you are over budget, or if there has been a large or suspicious transaction on your account.

The app’s monthly bill payment tracker lets you see all of your bills at a glance, and you can receive reminders about upcoming due dates and alerts if your funds are low.

For those looking for more resources to help them along their financial journey, Mint has its own educational blog, as well as tools you can use, such as a home accessibility calculator and one loan repayment calculator.

Security features include security scanning with VeriSign for data transfer and multi-factor authentication to access your account. Mint will need a 4-digit code to display your account or Touch ID.

It’s also worth noting that Mint is a brand of Intuit, which is the company behind TurboTax® and QuickBooks®, which millions of people use to store sensitive financial data.

Although the Mint app is free, there are some ads built into the app. Be prepared to watch a lot of ads with any free budgeting app. There is no option to upgrade to an ad-free version.

The Mint Budgeting app is available in the App Store (for iOS) and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple Watch. It is also available on Google Play (for Android).

App Store Rating at time of writing: 4.7 out of 5 (over 625,000 ratings)

Note on Google Play at time of writing: 4.5 out of 5 (over 180,000 ratings)

If you are new to budgeting apps or are tired of paying for the one you are using now, mint is the best free option for you.

Users have access to all the features typical of the budgeting app, as well as credit monitoring, personalized alerts, and educational tools to walk them through the process.

For those who are more serious about budgeting and don’t mind paying monthly or annual fees, consider the You need a budget (YNAB) budgeting application. Instead of using traditional budgeting compartments, users allocate every dollar they earn to something (known as a “zero-based budgeting system” where no dollar goes unnoticed).

To determine which budgeting apps offer the best user experience, CNBC Select analyzed over a dozen apps from top companies in the market and looked at their prices, features, user reviews, and ratings.

We lowered our ranking by only considering apps that sync transactions from users’ bank accounts, cost little (or no) to sign up, are easy to use, and are accessible on multiple devices, so they’re accessible. and compatible for the most part.

The five apps we selected for this ranking are either free, offer a free version, or have a free trial that users can try out before signing up.

All the apps in our roundup have a significant number of user reviews and high ratings. Each app on this list has at least 1,000 reviews on the App Store (for iOS) and Google Play (for Android), as well as a rating of over 4 stars (out of 5) on both platforms.

Other factors we looked at included app security features, user customization, and educational tools on offer.